My Monthly Subscriber Rate Jumped 666% In 6 Months – How A-List BloggingBootcamp Brought Readers To My Site
My name is Steven Aitchison and I started a blog in August 2006 called Change Your Thoughts. I had a rough idea that it was going to be about self development, but I kinda ran out of ideas after a few weeks, and wrote about crazy things like Tips To Reduce Farting (seriously I did). Thankfully I found my groove and kept on with the blogging slowly building up a loyal list of people who followed me.† At the same time I was working full time, and also doing something called affiliate marketing.
Skip ahead three years and I was posting to the blog once per week and had built up a subscriber base of 3,200 readers and averaged around 16 comments per post.† I was still trying to run around 20 or so websites with my affiliate stuff.† Then it hit me, the one constant to me enjoying my life online was writing, and writing for the blog.† I dropped everything else and decided I was going to take blogging seriously.† I looked around for other bloggers who were crushing it and one stood out: Leo Babauta.
Myself and Leo had actually met and spoke to each a few years before as we were part of a †Personal Blog Network who helped each other with social bookmarking and giving advice.† We both had around 200 subscribers at the time (actually I had about 240 and Leo had 190 
).† I wrote an email to the group and asked for some feedback on my blog and here is what Leo wrote:
That email 3 years ago
Sent: 09/03/2007 07:56 (9th March 2007)
Hi Steven,
Great question. I think that’s something we all grapple with. I’m new to the blogging game, so I should probably just listen to other responses on this one, but my philosophy is to just jump in, so here I go!
You asked for honesty, so please brace yourself.
What has worked for me so far, and has gotten me some early success, isn’t related so much to promotion (although I’ve tried various methods with mixed success), but to content. The biggest revelation to me, and it came early on (in the first week), was that what people really want is *useful* stuff. The self-promotional stuff, the stuff about what you did today, the stuff about what you think †about this national issue or that celebrity, that’s interesting, but it’s not what they want to tune in to, day in and day out. They are looking for a regular source of useful information (at least, the people who come to my site are looking for that).
So my formula is simple: I think about what I want to know, and what would be useful to me, and write about that. I’ve searched the web countless hours looking for useful articles about productivity, motivation, goals, habits, exercise, healthy eating, finances, and the like, so that’s what I write about. And not just general abstract concepts, but real, useful, practical advice, based on my reading and my real experiences. I share my mistakes and what I’ve learned, so others don’t make that same mistake.
Once you’ve got that down, there are a few other things that help me:
* concise, catchy headlines — people read this stuff in a feed reader, so they only actually read †articles with headlines that catch their attention as interesting or useful
* concise information that easily highlights info they can use — people skim through articles, instead of reading it like a book, and like to read stuff in lists, or in bolded sentences that catch their eye
* links that take them to more useful stuff about the topic
OK, that might be obvious, but let’s take a quick look at your site’s front page. Here are the headlines:
Global warming – A politicians dream
MyBlogLog Love 7th March 2007
This weeks star post 5th March 2007
2000 bloggers social experiment: The results
MyBlogLog love 1st March 2007
The process of a dream
This weeks star post 26th February 2007
Tagged – Why I blog
Oprah Winfrey – ‘The secret’
MyBlogLog community love
Now let me be brutally honest, and go over each headline with the two criteria of 1) usefulness and 2) concise and interesting headlines — my remarks are in parentheses:
Global warming – A politicians dream (not useful, but interesting)
MyBlogLog Love 7th March 2007 (neither)
This weeks star post 5th March 2007 (neither)
2000 bloggers social experiment: The results (interesting, and useful
to bloggers)
MyBlogLog love 1st March 2007 (neither)
The process of a dream (vague, kinda interesting, not useful)
This weeks star post 26th February 2007 (neither)
Tagged – Why I blog (neither)
Oprah Winfrey – ‘The secret’ (interesting, not really useful)
MyBlogLog community love (neither)
OK, I’m sorry if that was harsh, but I wanted to illustrate my points:
1) You have some interesting articles (global warming, dreams, The Secret, and especially the 2000 bloggers), but they would be better if refocused on how they can be useful to people
2) The headlines need to be refocused on being useful and interesting
3) You have too many meta-posts about MyBlogLog, Why I blog, and This Week’s Star Post (you can’t tell if this Star Post will be interesting from the home page, and thus you would have to click on the “more” link to find out, but you wouldn’t click unless you already thought it was interesting)
Steven, I think you have a good blog, but you’re looking to improve readership, so I thought I’d give my analysis … I hope it’s been more useful than harsh. Also, remember that I’m a new blogger — I could be completely wrong, so please take all this with a grain of salt.
Good luck!
Leo Babauta
And he had only been blogging a few months, I wished I had listened back then, but truth be told I had 50 more subscribers than Leo so I must have been better than him (how naive )
August 2009
So when I heard that Leo and Mary Jaksch were running a bootcamp I jumped right in and thought it was a bit serendipitous that I had found out about it just at the right time I was looking for a course like this.
I paid the course fees, electing to spread them over 3 months and attended all the 10 days bootcamps.
The Bootcamp
I loved the format of the bootcamp, mainly a video chat with Leo talking about a specific topic each day and giving us a PDF beforehand and some homework we had to do, yes there was homework.
I devoured all of the PDFs and started putting into practice what I was learning.† The main points that really hit home with me were:
Headline Writing
Guest Posting
Psychology of subscribing
The other amazing thing I took from the Bootcamp were the people on the course.† I have met and stayed in touch with most of the A-Listers in the club who were in my niche and have worked with some of them on my own blog.
The day my blog changed
My blog changed when I signed up for a critique from Leo and Mary and they were honest and to the point.† Within 2 weeks I changed my theme altogether and changed the look of the blog to its current state and I have never looked back.† (If you get the chance, do not be shy about your blog, put it up for a critique).
I also got a lot of comments from others in the forum which was also a big plus.† The forums are a great place to hang out, ask questions and help people when you can, believe me you will meet and befriend some great people on this bootcamp and it’s worht getting stuck in and helping as many people as you can and asking as many questions as you can, you won’t get another chance like it.
My blog today
www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog
Subscribers: 7,301
Average comments: 43
Due to the success of writing a post for zenhabits.net and writing for other blogs as well as my own I am now a paid freelance writer (part time) for:
www.dumblittleman.com
www.lifesnips.com
www.dialecticmagazine.com
I have also self published 5 books:
100 ways to Find Ideas for your blog posts (Available on Amazon in the next week)
Making friends: 8 Steps to making friends quickly and easily (availabel on Amazon in the next week)
37 Ways to communicate with your sons (available on Amazon in the next 2 weeks)
So, you see I have not only improved my blog beyond measure I have improved my life beyond measure.
I sincerely hope you enjoy the bootcamp and learn as much as I have learned, and I considered myself a blogging veteran (there’s always something new to learn).
Good luck!
Note from Leo and Mary: We’ve decided to only take 150 participants for this Bootcamp in order to be able to give personal attention. If you want to create a blog that rocks, click HERE. Places are going fast…
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